tian demands that it acknowledge the existence of Israel and disarm. "How can the world want us to rec- ognize the state of Israel when Israel will not give us the right to exist, when it took our land and imposed occupation and does not recognize our rights?" he said. "Resistance for us is a legitimate ac- tion. Divine and human laws give us the right to resist." Hamas has not executed any sui- cide bombings in the past few months, but the Israelis do not take the lull to reflect a nascent desire for compro- mise. "The conflict with Israel is not a matter of land," Sheikh Nayef said. "It's a matter of ideology. All the Is- raeli slogans-the 'chosen people,' the 'promised land'-the basis of their state is religious. But these are religious legends, false stories. God did not give them this land as if Israelis, Jews, are preferred above all other peoples on earth and all other peoples were meant to serve them." The Sheikh went on, "Two hundred years ago in Europe, they were conservative people, but now the fashion world, the media-it's con- trolled by the Jews. And their people are sexually open. Freud, aJew, was the one who destroyed morals, and Marx destroyed divine ideologies. If it is not all Jews, well, they were a big part of this. And now it is the Jewish lobby in the United States that is setting policy in the world and causing the United States to wage war all over the world." O ne of the biggest financial support- ers of Ham as has been the funda- mentalist Shiite regime in Tehran, ac- cording to Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies. At a conference in Tehran last October called "A World Without 2l 1 o o l ODO [I[ 00 0 nf ......., (J '1 know! I know! Biscuits! I'm on it!" Zionism," Iran's current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urged the Palestinians to maintain a maximalist position toward Israel. oting Aya- tollah Khomeini's statement that Israel "must be eliminated from the pages of history," Ahmadinejad instructed the Palestinians never to bow to the de- mands of diplomacy. They must not recognize Israel-and anyone who does, he declared, "should know that he will burn in the fire of the Ummah," the Islamic nation. I asked the Sheikh ifhe agreed with Ahmadinejad's argument, much publi- cized in recent months, that the Holo- caust was a myth, and a pretext for the creation of Israel. The question, the Sheikh said, had direct bearing on his morning hom- ily about the Danish cartoons and the will of the Muslims to resist humilia- tion: "When Ahmadinejad spoke, ev- eryone in the West condemned him, but why didn't the West say that Ah- madinejad had his right of freedom of speech?" The Sheikh smiled like one who has scored an irrefutable point. "If the issue concerns Jews, it's always anti- Semitism, anti-Semitism, but when it concerns other religions it's a matter of freedom of speech." But did he agree with the Iranian leader? I asked. The Sheikh smiled again, this time indulgently. "If I answer, you'll provide me with a real headache, won't you?" he said. "I don't want to tell you my opinion on this. No doubt, it's too controversial. If I say I agree with Ahmadinejad, Hamas will be added to the list of those who deny the Holocaust. If I don't agree with him, it will provide the Jews with the excuse that, since they suffered a lot in the Second World War, it justifies what they are doing now. What I do know about for sure is the crimes of the Jews in Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza." Word came that the Sheikh's brother Jibril was going to visit. Through the window we could see a convoy led by an armored Land Cruiser and a BMW sedan-the rewards ofFatah power-pulling up in front of the house. The Sheikh sighed. He did not seem entirely ready to greet his big brother. To cheer him up I asked him